VISA’s Crypto Head Debunks Myth and False Reports of Them Pausing Crypto Partnerships

On Tuesday, February 28, Reuters published a report stating that the world’s top two payment giants - VISA and Mastercard - have decided to suspend their involvement in crypto ventures. Over the last two years, these two companies had been working actively to expand to expand their footprint in the crypto space.

Sources familiar with the matter stated that amid the “high-profile collapses” in the crypto space, the two players have decided to distance themselves from this industry.

In its report, Reuters quoted a VISA spokesperson saying: “Recent high-profile failures in the crypto sector are an important reminder that we have a long way to go before crypto becomes a part of mainstream payments and financial services”.

However, the VISA spokesperson said that the company will still continue to work further on its native crypto and blockchain strategy. A representative from MasterCard added: “Our efforts continue to focus on the underlying blockchain technology and how that can be applied to help address current pain points and build more efficient systems”.

As we know, during the last year of 2022, the cryptocurrency market faced some high-profile collapses including the fall of some of the biggest crypto lenders such as FTX, Celsius, and BlockFi. After the collapse of these crypto firms, their VISA-issued debit cards became unusable and were terminated.

But soon as the report from Reuters caught fire, VISA’s head of crypto Cuy Sheffield issued clarification through his Twitter account. Sheffield stated that the story is inaccurate as far as concerns to VISA.

He further added that VISA continues “to partner with crypto companies to improve fiat on and off ramps as well as progress on our product roadmap to build new products that can facilitate stablecoin payments in a secure, compliant, and convenient way. Despite the challenges and uncertainty in the crypto ecosystem, our view has not changed that fiat-backed digital currencies running on public blockchains have the potential to play an important role in the payments ecosystem”.

The chief of VISA’s crypto division further added that anyone looking to build at the intersection of “crypto and payments” might consider reaching out to them.

After last year’s crypto winter and collapses like FTX’s, regulators worldwide have turned extra vigilant scrutinising projects and looking to work on regulation. Unless there’s clear regulations in place, we don’t expect big players to fuel their crypto projects at fast speeds.